The one thing the plutocracy and their cohort in the political establishment are good at is fooling people into voting against their interests. The bad news is they could very well manage to do that with Trumpcare, as well. Our ineffective health care system owes a debt to corrupt politicians from both parties, just with different gradations evil.
It’s been said before and it bears repeating: it wasn’t Republicans who created the current dysfunctions in Obamacare. The blame lies with certain corporatist Democrats who used Republicans and their failed ideological tenets in the Affordable Care Act. “Bipartisanship” was an excuse for a flawed bill dependent on private insurance. It was a major piece of legislation that allowed pharmaceutical companies to continue the pilfer of drugs that taxpayer funds were instrumental in developing. Democrats held a filibuster-proof Senate long enough to defeat Republican intransigence. But insurance companies and other factions in the medical industry owned enough Democrats to stymie what would have been best.
Progressives will win when we earn the trust of the American people. Being “better than” is not sufficient because right-wing marketing has quickly closed the gap between evil and “just not good enough.” That is why Republicans win. We progressives must show the conviction of our values in all issues, including health care. Voters must not find any reason to hesitate on our values at all.
To be clear, Obamacare must be fixed until we elect politicians with the spines necessary to ignore the lobbyists and transfer our system to a single-payer, Medicare for All approach. It is the only system proven to work and ensure all citizens get covered at an affordable cost. In the short term, let's get a public option to compete against the insurance companies pilfering the middle class in the individual insurance market while giving corporate accounts attractive rates.
The one thing we must not do is fall into the trap of allowing anyone to believe that somehow Trumpcare, a bill that guts Medicaid and provides billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy out of the taxes that pay for the Affordable Care Act, can somehow be a better alternative.
There are already articles that use a distorted analysis to make that point. But all evidence points to Trumpcare being a disaster for those with pre-existing conditions.
A Kaiser Health News article titled "Preexisting Conditions And Continuous Coverage: Key Elements Of GOP Bill" lays out the pitfalls that the Trumpcare snake oil salespeople are peddling. The following anecdote from the article is probative.
Before he was diagnosed with head and neck cancer in 2015, Anthony Kinsey often went without health insurance. He is a contract lawyer working for staffing agencies on short-term projects in the Washington, D.C., area, and sometimes the 90-day waiting period for coverage through a staffing agency proved longer than the duration of his project, if coverage was offered at all.
When Kinsey, now 57, learned he had cancer, he was able to sign up for a plan with a $629 monthly premium because the agency he was working for offered group coverage that became effective almost immediately. The plan covered the $62,000 surgery to cut out the diseased bone and tissue on the left side of his face, as well as chemotherapy and radiation. His share of the treatment cost was $1,800.
If the American Health Care Act, which the House recently passed, becomes law, people like Kinsey who have health problems might not fare so well trying to buy insurance after a lapse.
The Republican bill would still require insurers to offer coverage to everyone, including people who have preexisting medical conditions, such as diabetes, asthma or even cancer. But it would allow states to opt out of the federal health law’s prohibition against charging sick people more than healthy ones. In those states, if people have a break in coverage of more than 63 days, insurers could charge them any price for coverage for approximately a year, effectively putting coverage out of reach for many sick people, analysts say. After a year, they would be charged a regular rate again.
And it gets much worse than that.
But some health policy analysts suggest that it’s not only people who have a gap in coverage who could be affected if a state seeks the health law waiver. There could be consequences for anyone with a preexisting condition, even those who have maintained continuous insurance coverage. That’s because the bill opens the door for insurers to set rates for people based on their health. For example, those without a health condition could be offered discounted premiums.
“If you have a preexisting condition, you’re going to be put into the block of business with the sicker risk pool,” said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms.
And to combat the fallacies about high-risk pools, there is this.
State high-risk pools, which were available in 35 states before the ACA passed, have been widely criticized, however, as inadequate for people with expensive health care needs. Premiums were often extremely high, and there were frequently lifetime or annual limits on coverage. Some plans excluded coverage for as long as a year for the very conditions people needed insurance.
Regardless of high-risk pools and the ample evidence they do not work, the callousness toward and disregard for those who allowed their coverage to lapse (often out of financial necessity) is expressed by the Conservative American Enterprise Institute’s resident fellow, Thomas Miller.
High-risk pools offer a reasonable solution for the 2 million to 4 million people in the individual market he estimates have preexisting conditions but would otherwise be medically uninsurable or offered such high-cost coverage that they couldn’t afford it.
Besides, he argued, the higher rates would last for only a year. “Once you’ve paid up, you graduate back to the regular market,” Miller said. “It’s not like being sentenced to the Gulag.”
Of course, he fails to mention that the rates in the high-risk pools are likely to be unaffordable for those who most need it. We have to keep our eyes wide open and maintain the pressure on those that would sacrifice the lives of sick Americans to give tax cuts to a select, wealthy few.
The bottom line: single-payer Medicare for all is the only answer.
Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are heartless opportunists playing with the lives of every poor and middle-class American. MSNBC's Ali Velshi explained the reality: the free market simply does not work for health care. You cannot shop around efficiently based on when you get sick or where you get sick.
And there is a message that we must make every Trump voter aware of. As Chuck Todd recently pointed out, Trumpcare decimates coverage for all—but mostly for Trump voters.
It’s time to learn and educate everyone we come across about why single payer/Medicare for All is our future.
Call your senators and Congress members every day and let them know you don’t want the Affordable Care Act repealed. Also, tell them they must support H.R. 676, or Medicare for All. If you aren’t sure how to get in touch with them, then click here.
And let's get busy encouraging everyone to register to vote. We must usher in a new slew of progressive legislators who will put people—and country—first.